For Azerbaijanis displaced by war, a chance to finally go home

For Azerbaijanis displaced by war, a chance to finally go home

BAKU, Azerbaijan: As a young woman in 1993, Azerbaijani Ramziya Sharifova waded across a river into Iran with her family to escape Armenian forces capturing her village, then watched as they burned it to the ground. Nearly 30 years later, she's finally planning to go home. The 47-year-old librarian is one of the 750,000 Azerbaijanis who fled the Nagorno-Karabakh region in southwestern Azerbaijan and several surrounding districts in the early 1990s. As the Soviet Union collapsed, ethnic Armenian separatists declared independence for Karabakh and seized control of the region in a brutal war that left tens of thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Largely dormant for decades, the conflict re-erupted last September. Over six weeks of heavy fighting, Azerbaijan's forces reclaimed much of the territory the country had lost in the 1990s, including seven districts around Karabakh. Separatist authorities retained control of most of Karabakh itself, but a Russian-brokered peace deal agreed to allow people long displaced from their homes-like Sharifova-to return. "I can't describe the feelings that overwhelmed me when it was announced“ that her home region of Zangilan had been retaken, Sharifova said. "I burst into tears“¦ tears of joy for the liberation of our